


embrace infinity (The Untethered Remix)

by flowersforgraves



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Other, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 02:53:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20382487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowersforgraves/pseuds/flowersforgraves
Summary: A pizza dinner, a date night that isn't, a long time for Lyta to be lost in her own head.





	embrace infinity (The Untethered Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kanadka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kanadka/gifts).
  * Inspired by [embrace infinity](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18262358) by [kanadka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kanadka/pseuds/kanadka). 

There’s pizza on the table, Lyta remembers. Zack had shown up with a plant (red geraniums, he’d said, they were supposed to be a housewarming gift to grant good health) and a box of cheese pizza. She’s -- lost, a little, still holding the geranium in both hands while Zack sets up the dinner. This happens, sometimes, this untethered feeling; it’s gotten less frequent as time distances her from carrying Kosh, but it still lingers. 

Lyta shakes her head, trying to bring herself back to the station. She sets the plant down carefully on her bedside table, scrawls a note to herself to water it tonight after Zack goes home. 

“All right?” Zack asks, knocking gently on the doorframe, a courtesy more for show than anything else. The door is open; it would be easy for him to walk straight in. Not to mention he has security clearance to open most doors.

She suddenly realizes she’s been staring blankly at Zack for a good thirty seconds, and he’s starting to get concerned. “I’m fine,” she says.

He nods, letting her have the little lie. He could push it, she knows, and she’d crack and tell him, but he doesn’t. It’s probably more than a little fucked up that she’s grateful he’s a decent person, but that’s what her life has been like lately. Ulkesh had been nothing like Kosh, horrifying and dark and all-consuming. 

“Pizza’s getting cold,” Zack observes. “If -- I mean, cold pizza is good too. In my opinion.”

Lyta smiles at him, warm and genuine. _Kosh,_ she thinks. “Let’s eat.”

It’s good pizza. Zack’s a sweet guy; Lyta has grown fond of him of late, and she might see herself falling for him in some alternate timeline, one where she hasn’t been a vessel for a god. She knows he’s trying to woo her, which is… cute. She’s inclined to let it continue, because she likes him and she needs to interact with people more, but she can’t let it go farther than a pizza dinner every once in a while.

“How’s work?” she asks Zack, like they’re an old married couple. 

He coughs as he swallows a mouthful of cheese too fast. “It’s fine. Same shit, different day, you know?” He shrugs. “Probably should be sleeping more, probably should be working less, but that’s how it goes sometimes.”

Lyta nods, more acknowledgement than sympathy. 

“What have you been up to?” he asks. Pause. “I mean. Not in a job way. Not in _my_ job way. How have you been?” 

She smiles again, granting him the mercy of stopping him there. “I’m thinking about Kosh,” she says, and is surprised at her own words.

“Yeah?” Zack pours himself a plastic cup of soda. “Good things, or not so much?”

Lyta copies his earlier shrug. “Kosh was -- indescribable. Ulkesh was everything Kosh wasn’t. More pizza, please?”

He passes the box over. “So, describable?” It’s his own joke, but he can’t help suppressing a giggle anyway. 

She grins, genuine amusement washing over her. For once, she feels it more than surface-deep, a warm glow in the pit of her stomach.

“Hey, I was proud of that one,” Zack protests good-naturedly, assuming her silence is exasperation. “I thought that was pretty good.”

“It was,” she says. “It was a good one.” 

It’s quiet for a moment that seems to stretch into forever. Then, “Tell me about Kosh?” Zack asks, almost carefully.

Lyta pauses. She hasn’t spoken about Kosh at length with anyone, let alone Ulkesh, but Zack is here and he is offering to hear a story he is unprepared to deal with. She shouldn’t. Zack should know what he is getting into before he offers. But the offer is there, tempting.

“You don’t have to,” he says, and she realizes he’s been waiting for an answer, looking at her intently. She’s not sure how long she was lost in her own head, but Zack has refilled both his glass and hers with the last of the soda.

Lyta says, “Do you know the feeling of drinking hot soup, and you can feel the warmth all the way down your throat? Do you know the pain of frostbite thawed too fast? It was both of those. He was beautiful. He was made of light, but light can be too hot and too cold and too near and too far all at once.” Her eyes unfocus and she falls back into the untethered state. “It was the best thing that happened to me. He was -- he was everything and nothing and it was all there, all _me_, all _mine_. A supergravitational force. Something so dense that it pulled all of me in and wrapped me up. I’ve never felt so safe and so small and so fragile.”

She does not see Zack nod. She feels him touch her hand, though, and she forces herself to focus on that real, grounding connection. “Do you know how small and insignificant we are?” she asks him. “Kosh understood that, he understood how tiny we all are and loved us anyway. We are so transient. Ephemeral. But he loved us, individually and together. He didn’t give me wings, but he revealed to me that I’d had them all along.”

She shudders, suddenly slammed back into her body in the here and now. “It was amazing,” she tells him.

He is looking at her with wide eyes, full of concern and fascination. “Lyta, are you -- are you okay?” he asks, and it isn’t the too-gentle tone of someone who pities her, but the quiet determination she had had when Kosh used her as a vessel.

“I’m fine,” she says, tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, finishes the pizza crust still on her plate. “You don’t want to hear about Ulkesh.”

Zack nods, accepting that, though she can see in his eyes that she’s stoked his curiosity more, not satisfied it. “I think there’s proper plums at a stand in the Zocalo, if you were interested,” he offers.

“Sure,” she says, offering him her arm. He takes it, like a delicate lady of Earth’s long-ago past, and smiles.

“Zack,” she says in the elevator, thoughtful, “the geraniums.”

He raises an eyebrow. “What about them?”

Lyta looks up at him, squeezes his hand tight for a moment, resettles her consciousness back down. “I’d like to stop and get a watering can.”

Zack beams.


End file.
